FIFA host cities tackle Wi-Fi problems

Source: Infosecurity 08 Jun 2018

As football fans gear up for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, which is being held in Russia, fraudsters are trying to score on scams while host cities are struggling to secure reliable Wi-Fi access points. According to Kaspersky Lab, more than 20% of Wi-Fi hotspots in FIFA World Cup host cities have cybersecurity issues, which could result in a winning goal for cybercriminals.

Out of the approximately 32,000 public Wi-Fi networks in these host cities, 7,176 do not use traffic encryption. According to the research, Saransk, ranked the safest city in terms of its public Wi-Fi, reportedly has 72% of all access points secured with WPA/WPA2 protocol encryption. “The top-three cities with the highest proportion of unsecured connections are Saint Petersburg (48% of Wi-Fi access points are unsecured), Kaliningrad (47%) and Rostov (44%).”